THE LACCADIVES AND THE WEST COAST. 417 
freshness to everything from the golden sunlight to the silver 
song of home it wafts to us. 
Healthful enjoyment seems to irradiate the whole scene, but 
we cannot quite forget that within gun shot of all this foaming 
life, in a darkened chamber hanging between life and death lies 
the master spirit, who for the past quarter of a century, has 
well and wisely ruled and curbed the turbulent and warlike 
Nepalese. He was to have sailed for Europe yesterday; the 
previous evening mounting a borrowed Arab, he was thrown, 
and he still remains insensible. What his fate* may be it will 
be long before we learn, our anchor is up, and we can only 
leave behind us our heartiest and most cordial wiskes for his 
recovery. 
Our anchor is up—but somehow we are not moving—the 
screw declines it would appear to revolve. At last, however, we 
begin to creep ahead very slowly and hesitatingly—after nearly 
an hour’s hard work with crow bars, the engines have consented 
to move very slowly. Now they stop, now they are encouraged 
with afew vigorous pokes with a crow bar and go off 100 re- 
volutions of the screw to the minute, for two minutes, and then 
gradually slacken and slacken, coming toa dead stop in the 
midst of the most crowded part of the harbour and exactly to 
windward of the Regatta grand stand boat. In vain now are 
the crow bars plied, the screw is jambed hard and fast—the 
brilliant beings who carry on the Dockyard operations have, it 
would seem, let an wnseasoned block of lignum-vite, into the 
stern post for the screw shaft to revolve through, and this block 
has swelled so that it is doubtful whether we shall ever get the 
shaft to move again. 
Now the “Clyde” is one of the old gun boats, specially 
intended for river work, no keel, very shallow draught, very 
heavily. built, a poor sailor off a wind and quite helpless on 
a wind, going to leeward quite as fast as she forges ahead, so 
that being admittedly a sailing vessel that won’t sail, it will, 
to say the least, be rather awkward if she also turns out a 
steamer, that won’t steam. 
Meanwhile we are drifting, threatening to drift on to a mass 
of boats crowded with sightseers, nay on to the grand stand 
itself, and are hopelessly perplexing the numerous racing boats, 
now just coming in to the winning post. We become aware 
of remonstrances and reproaches, addressed to us from various 
quarters in naval phraseologyy—our intellectual capacity is 
rudely questioned, our optics become the subject of uncharitable 
denunciations. Our sails are being set, but chains are rusty, 
* Jung Bahadur, as we long subsequently learned, soon recovered sufficiently to 
leave Bombay, but he abandoned his proposed trip to Europe. 
